The Full Works Concert: Thursday 22 January 2015, 8pm

Mozart, Delius, Rachmaninov and Sir Arthur Sullivan are the great composers featured in tonight's show.

Tonight Catherine Bott features one of Mozart’s most beloved concertos, the Piano Concerto No.21. It was written in 1785 when Mozart was only 29, and just six years before his early death. When he had finished writing the piece, an unprecedented busy and successful time followed for Mozart. He premiered the concerto himself at a benefit concert in the National Court Theatre at which he also, according to the adverts, did some of his famous improvisations. So great was his memory for music, that he was said to be able to store at least two complete new symphonies in his head before he needed to write them down. 

We also hear the overture to Arthur Sullivan’s operetta Ruddigore, premiered on this day in 1887 and Mikhail Pletnev conducts the Russian National Orchestra in Rachmaninov’s Symphony No.2. Rachmaninov wrote it in Dresden where he and his young family lived for the best part of four years from 1906. Rachmaninov considered himself first and foremost a composer and felt that his conducting schedule in Russia was detracting from his time to compose. Summers spent at his in-law's estate presented Rachmaninov with the opportunity to write both his Second Symphony and the tone poem, Isle of the Dead. 

Also on tonight’s concert, Delius’s lush Violin Sonata No.3 performed by soloists from the London Symphony Orchestra.

Arthur Sullivan: Ruddigore – Overture
Andrew Penny conducts the Royal Ballet Sinfonia

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No.21 in C major
Piano: Christian Ihle Hadland
Arvid Engegard conducts the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra

Sergei Rachmaninov: Symphony No.2 in E minor
Mikhail Pletnev conducts the Russian National Orchestra

Frederick Delius: Violin Sonata No.3
Violin: Alexander Barantshcik
Piano: Israela Margalit